BY BODEÂ GBADEBO, Abuja
The Senate has asked the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to furnish it with details of ongoing projects being executed in states of the country.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on FERMA, Senator Gershon Bassey, conveyed the panel’s demand when the agency appeared before the committee to defend its proposed 2021 budget.
The Managing Director of FERMA, Nurudeen Rafindadi, however, assured the committee that the agency will provide details of the projects executed state by state as requested.
“We are bringing the breakdown state by state as soon as possible and the amount earmarked for the projects across the country,” he said.
When asked to project the roads that will be done in 2021 fiscal year, the FERMA boss said, “We cannot project right now, we have N21billion available to tackle emergency projects which are yet to be deployed yet.”
“We prioritise, first, emergency of the job based on ministerial prioritisation for roads, prioritise critical economic routes, road to refineries and depots, road through agricultural areas,” Rafindadi explained.
He added that part of the priority of FERMA were roads funded through multilateral loans and internal federal institutions.
Speaking about the 2021 budget of FERMA, the Managing Director said that N38.2billion was proposed for capital expenditure while N17.3billion was proposed for recurrent expenditure and N14.9billion for overhead cost, including a proposed personnel cost of N2.3billion.
LEADERSHIP reports that the total 2021 budget proposal for the FERM is N55.5billion.
